3D Class S3 Week 035 Kartika Dagger Part 1 - High and Low Poly

S3 Week 035 Kartika Dagger Part 1 - High and Low Poly

   So I wanted to push myself to get as much done as I could with the High Poly and Low Poly so I could have 3 weeks worth of texturing. Currently, I'm not sitting too bad. I've mostly completed the Low and the High Poly. I still need to do some final polish to the sculpt, and therefore I wasn't able to get to making adjustments to the Low Poly to fit some of the details I made to the High Poly sculpt. After that, I'll need to UV, and then export over to Substance for the bake. However, I don't anticipate these things taking me all that long, and I should be off to creating my tilable texture in the next couple of days

 Low Poly (current) -   

High Poly (current) - 

See ya next week for the midway turn in! ^_^

DECLARATION! Second Project of Semester 3

  For this project I'll be putting a heavy focus on texturing. When we first it was made known that this would be our research project where we explore a program outside of our curriculum, I took the opportunity to come up with an idea that would allow me to explore Substance Designer and creating various tilable material types, but be applied to a single asset. After some research, I found what is called a "Tibetan Kartika Ritual Axe Dagger" which is this neat little guy --

   So for this project, I'll be breaking it up like this --

• Week 1 - Low and High Poly

• First Pass at Low Poly, exported to ZBrush for High Poly, sculpt complete or close to completion

• Week 2 - Silver Texture

• High Poly completed
• Low Poly completed and exported to Substance Painter for the bake
• The tilable texture for the silver material should be started and close to completion
• Low Poly of box for kartika completed. Potentially exported to ZBrush to have ready for High Poly sculpt detailing

• Week 3 - Gold Texture

• Finish Silver material and texturing job. Create a weathered gold tilable texture in Substance Designer. Paint job should reflect an ancient look
• High Poly of box completed. Exported to ZBrush for bake. Start texturing and get as much done as possible, or complete
• If possible, get started on the Bronze tilable texture

• Week 4 - Bronze Texture

• Create a weathered bronze tilable texture. Paint job should reflect an ancient, dirtied look
• All three paint jobs should be exported to Marmoset for final renders
• Finish texture for box if not already done. Export that as well to Marmoset for final renders

   Here I have my reference board of the dagger and the different materials I'll be taking inspiration from --

Super excited to get to work!

3D Class S3 Week 034 Vadim Gun Part 4 - Texturing and Rendering the Game Res for the Vadim Gun

S3 Week 034 Vadim Gun Part 4 - Texturing and Rendering the Game Res for the Vadim Gun

   WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

   It certainly was a long week, but I'm happy and proud to have tackled my hardest project yet. It tested me formidably in my modeling and texturing skills, and I'm proud to say that I think I overcame the challenge. Not only was this a complex model, but I only had the one reference image of this super fictional gun, and really could only frankenstein match a handful of things in real life. Though it kept me on my toes and constantly skating by the skin of my teeth, in the end it was really a lot of fun.

   Without further preamble, here's the result of my texture job in Substance Painter --

   Another challenge, albeit a bit smaller and significantly easier to manage, for this project I utilized Marmoset Toolbag 3 for my game res renders. Though I value the practice of exporting to UE4 to better familiarize myself with the engine, Marmoset took waaaaaaaaaay less time to set up and crank out some great renders.

   In a fraction of the time, I was able to produce this for my final results --

Wahoo! Until next time ^_^

3D Class S3 Week 033 Vadim Gun Part 3 - High Res, Baking, and Setup for Texturing

S3 Week 033 Vadim Gun Part 3 - High Res, UVing, Baking, and Setup for Texturing

   So this past week was a ton of preparation work and tweaking. I Uved the low poly and pushed that FBX to Substance Painter, and then I pushed all sixteen pieces of the gun from ZBrush to Substance Painter for the bake. I had to run through the bake a few times, and paint out some artifacting, but all in all I got everything in and it looks clean. I have to tweak a couple things here and there, but it's going good and I'm all set to go to town with texturing :)

3D Class S3 Week 032 Vadim Gun Part 2 - Finishing the Model and Preparing for the High Res

S3 Week 032 Vadim Gun Part 2 - Finishing the Model and Preparing for the High Res

   So I'm not doing too bad on the schedule I set out to do. I've completed my model, and I've been working on holding the edges for the high res to bring into ZBrush. In Zbrush, I'll work on polishing the edges and adding alpha details for the bake. My goal for Week 2 was to at least get everything into Zbrush to have that ready to go. Alas, I'm a bit behind. But, I set those lofty goals for a reason. Heck, I gave all of Week 4 for UE4 implementation, so with that in mind I gave myself a week for catch up. Of course I don't want that, but it gives me some breathing room. In any case, this is where I'm at so far as of Sunday night, with the low poly completed -

I'll have an update tomorrow with the high res completed and ready to be pushed into ZBrush ^_^



UPDATE 05/28/19

   Whew. Okay so I've exported all SIXTEEN pieces of the gun to ZBrush for some polish and tweaked a thing here and there. I'll bounce back to Maya to make sure my low poly work fits snuggly with the high poly polish tweaks, and then once the UVs are all done, I'll be all set to go to move on over to Substance Painter for the bake and texturing.

   Fingers crossed I don't run into some major issues, but with this progress made, I'm back to a more comfortable place according to my schedule ^_^

3D Class S3 Week 031 Vadim Gun Part 1 - Starting the Low Poly

S3 Week 031 Vadim Gun Part 1- Starting the Low Poly

   Whelp.
   You know what they say. Shoot for the moon and you'll land among the stars.
   I knew when I picked this concept that it would be a lot of work. So I gave myself the challenge of completing 90% of the gun. I don't think I did too bad. Currently I think I'm about 75% there. There were a lot of smaller details as I worked my way from left to right with the concept. It's been a fun challenge though. I'm definitely working those modeling muscles 😎
  For this next week I'll be working on the remaining parts of the gun, and bringing over the pieces to ZBrush for polish and high poly baking, and then bringing it back to Maya to refine the low poly with cleanup and optimization.

   So here's what I have so far 🙂

All I'm missing is the huge claw thing in the front. It's fine. Everything is fine.

DECLARATION! First Project of Semester 3

   I really liked this gun from concept artist Vadim Sverdlov, and the piece is clean and legible enough to which I think I'll be able to interpret it in a 3D space. I was very much drawn to the silhouette and subtle hints of organic influence. This will also be a bit more of a challenge, seeing as this is my only reference image and I'll have to smart in how I interpret the different parts of the gun. Also, the texture job is a measurable step up to what I've done so far. But I'm excited for the new project and can't wait to get started!

https://www.artstation.com/tipagraphic

   The schedule I am planning for this project goes like this:

• Week 1 - Low Poly
• 90% completion of model in Maya. This means I'll have all of the pieces of the gun at least blocked out and modeled, save for some details to the pieces.
• Week 2 - High Poly
• Model should be complete, and I'll have a version where the edges are held, and the model is exported to ZBrush for fine details that will translate into the bake (If I'm really on top of it, I'll have the bake ready to go for the next phase in Substance Painter.)
• Week 3 - Texturing
• Finalize any detailing in ZBrush, and then move over to Substance Painter for the bake and then spend the week texturing  
• Week 4 - Export to UE4/Marmoset and Render
• Finalize texturing work and export maps for implementation into UE4 and optimize for game engine. Will also do a render in Marmoset to practice both methods. This week will also serve as a catch up week in case I fall behind in any of the other weeks

   In addition, here is the current reference board I have to aid me in my quest of making this super cool gun -

  And there we have it! Wish me luck ^_^